America has become an Old World country
By Janet Daley9:00PM GMT 10 Nov 2012
So Europe got the American president it wanted â the one who would present no threat to its own delusions. The United States is now officially one of us: an Old World country complete with class hatred, ethnic Balkanisation, bourgeois guilt and a paternalist ruling elite. And it is locked into the same death spiral of high public spending and self-defeating wealth redistribution as we are. Welcome to the future, and the beginning of what may turn out to be the terminal decline of the West.
There is a more historically significant, and possibly more permanent, development too. The United States has now acquired an electorally powerful liberal bourgeoisie who are convinced, as their European counterparts have been for several generations, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that public spending is inherently virtuous, that poverty can be cured by penalising wealth creation, and that government intervention can engineer social âfairnessâ.But it should run deeply against all the traditional American values of ferocious self-reliance and personal aspiration.
The idea of âthe richâ as an unreachable and undeserving class apart is an Old World concept rooted in the landed, hereditary wealth of an established aristocracy.
Back in its less sophisticated, less European, days, the United States had actually discovered the formula for extraordinary social vitality, and the miraculous ability to turn people who started with nothing into proud, self-determining citizens. It said to everyone who arrived: âThe state only exists to give you the chance to make your own way â to that end it will give you freedom under the rule of law, the right to live your life, to own property and to pursue happiness.â That was the deal.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the country would outgrow that fervent, youthful self-belief and become just another declining society, retreating from the world stage as brash new global powers loomed into view.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor.../America-has-become-an-Old-World-country.html
America joins the old world.
By Janet Daley9:00PM GMT 10 Nov 2012
So Europe got the American president it wanted â the one who would present no threat to its own delusions. The United States is now officially one of us: an Old World country complete with class hatred, ethnic Balkanisation, bourgeois guilt and a paternalist ruling elite. And it is locked into the same death spiral of high public spending and self-defeating wealth redistribution as we are. Welcome to the future, and the beginning of what may turn out to be the terminal decline of the West.
There is a more historically significant, and possibly more permanent, development too. The United States has now acquired an electorally powerful liberal bourgeoisie who are convinced, as their European counterparts have been for several generations, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that public spending is inherently virtuous, that poverty can be cured by penalising wealth creation, and that government intervention can engineer social âfairnessâ.But it should run deeply against all the traditional American values of ferocious self-reliance and personal aspiration.
The idea of âthe richâ as an unreachable and undeserving class apart is an Old World concept rooted in the landed, hereditary wealth of an established aristocracy.
Back in its less sophisticated, less European, days, the United States had actually discovered the formula for extraordinary social vitality, and the miraculous ability to turn people who started with nothing into proud, self-determining citizens. It said to everyone who arrived: âThe state only exists to give you the chance to make your own way â to that end it will give you freedom under the rule of law, the right to live your life, to own property and to pursue happiness.â That was the deal.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the country would outgrow that fervent, youthful self-belief and become just another declining society, retreating from the world stage as brash new global powers loomed into view.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor.../America-has-become-an-Old-World-country.html
America joins the old world.
